Yesterday’s “punishment” handed out by the ECB to Durham CCC was as violent and brutal a shafting as Yates has ever seen. Anywhere. The ECB completely ignored their own part in affairs – it was the ECB who encouraged Durham to become part of a system that would leave them desperately reliant on getting a test match to cover the costs of their applying for the right to host it – and handed down a massively disproportionate and unfair sanctioning.

It goes without saying that Yates is not impressed by this latest batch of imbecility from the ECB. ECB sanctioning decisions have no right of appeal, just like the kangaroo court that is the Cricket Disciplinary Committee, so those affected by the decision can’t do a damn thing about it.

The ongoing discussion between the pro-City franchise supporters and those of us who won’t accept being ridden over by the ECB’s insistence on gagging clauses and attempts to present a fait accompli gives Yates an opportunity to share a parable with y’all.

Pour yourself a nice mug of tea, settle back and enjoy this Parable of Corporate Bullshit

It was a Tuesday morning. Yates had been doing his usual techie things in the server room and emerged for a mouthful of coffee. The atmosphere in the section by the server room was unusually manic. No inspections were impending, maybe the section manager’s dodgy deals and misdeeds had been discovered and he’d been sacked. This thought pleased Yates greatly.

Yates has written previously about so-called journalists who seem capable of only producing content of which the ECB would approve. Either because there’s an ECB hand shoved up their arse or because they are a really vile piece of filth.

Paul Newman falls into this latter category. People have tweeted that he’s a nice chap, even decent and only doing his job.

The more Yates thinks about that the more he comes to one simple conclusion: that’s bollocks.

Yates firmly believes that whatever you write, people put an element of themselves in that writing. Paul Newman’s track record at the Daily Heil speaks for itself: there’s nothing nice about any of his work for the Daily Heil. In fact there’s very little to like about the Daily Heil in general.

And “He’s only doing his job”? The Nuremberg defence. Really? That speaks for itself. Bringing that up is an immediate loss of argument.

Oh look, another list on the Internet. Big fat hairy deal. When someone gets short of decent content, be it original or thought provoking, they invariably resort to that most overused thing – the list. The Cricketer magazine has come up with its own English Cricket Power List.

When you’ve been around science fiction fandom and classic rock fandom as long as Yates has you come to view lists as nothing more than an attempt at grabbing attention, often through contentious opinions, arse kissing, spurious bullshit or trying to settle a score.

Doctor Who, Space:1999, Stingray fandom have all had their (un) civil war moments, never mind trying to discuss certain rock guitarists or drummers. This sort of stuff has been going on for years; the world wide web in particular has given platforms to all sorts of people, some of whom probably need to open their bedroom windows, get a shower and get out a bit more while others really need to wake up, get a spine and engage their critical thinking abilities.

Relative silence here doesn’t mean all is well with the cricket world. Far from it. The BCCI is trying everything it can to avoid implementing the Lodha Review despite being told by the Supreme Court to stop fannying around and bloody well do it. South Africa’s national team is now subject to the kind of government interference the ICC is supposed to be intolerant of. Pakistan still haven’t played a home test match in Christ knows how long and should not have been allowed to bring Mohammad Amir to the UK for their tour. Australia have been exposed as being bloody awful against spin and just given the kind of stuffing Yates would like to give Bonnie Langford. Andre Russell is allowed to play cricket despite allegedly missing three drug tests. And Giles Clarke is still president of the ECB.

Yates was working on a piece about sponsorship and branding then something came along which was deserving of its own post. Yates was most annoyed to learn of the stupid behaviour of employees at Port of Tyne in threatening a photographer and film maker. At the time of writing Port of Tyne have yet to apologise to the photographer their staff harassed.

“How is this related to cricket?” Yates hears you ask.

Port of Tyne are Durham CCC’s sponsor for the Royal London One Day Cup.

Dear readers, those of you on Twitter might have seen, been followed, unfollowed and followed again by accounts claiming to be a County “Fan App”. There are 18 of them, one for each first class county. They look almost official, claiming that “[County name] Fan App is the best way to keep up to date with the club. Coming soon for iOS & Android!” but they were all created by a company called Spontly.

Did you know these “Fan App” sites have been ripping off content from sites belonging to your county club, other county club sites, the BBC and photographers? Here’s some proof:

For those of us deemed “outside cricket”, who follow the game and ask the awkward questions that have seen us branded with the OC monicker, Jarrod Kimber and Sam Collins’ Death of A Gentleman is confirmation of the slime, sleaze, conflicts of interest and corruption at the heart of cricket’s global governance. If you like or love cricket and aren’t aware of or up to date with the happenings in the game’s governance then you need to see this film. No ifs or buts, you must see this film.

Yates’ Latin teacher was a very wise man. Of course, this was something which only became apparent with the passage of time. One of the many wise things he said was that history repeats itself. Yates will go further and say that if history repeats itself in the same organisation just over a year later then the people in that organisation are imbecilic bellends of the worst kind.